PACE: Awareness Workshop
PS9 PACE is a framework developed and supported by the PTO for building on who we are as engaged parents to enhance our school partnership. It is centered on four cornerstone values: Patience, Awareness, Curiosity, and Empathy. We are exploring each value in a series of workshops to draft community norms together.
Awareness Workshop Overview
The PACE value of Awareness reads as follows:
Awareness builds understanding. School decisions involve multiple stakeholders—students, teachers, families, the NYC Public Schools system, and third-party programs to name a few. When we expand our perspective, we better understand why some decisions may not meet all of our individual needs.
In our workshop, we explored a scenario where a field trip doesn't go as planned: buses arrive late, the museum visit gets cut short, and kids come home disappointed. We used an iceberg as our visual to understand that much of what goes into school decisions happens "below the waterline," invisible to families.
Community Norms: Awareness
These norms were drafted together by parents at our PTO and Class Leads meetings:
- We recognize that our perspective is partial and ask questions before making assumptions
- We acknowledge that disappointing outcomes don't necessarily mean poor planning or lack of care
- We assume good intent and capability, recognizing the invisible work happening on behalf of our kids
These norms are aspirational. We're not always going to get it right. When we mess up, we learn and try again. We're building a practice together.
Key Insights: Field Trips
These are "below the waterline" factors that school staff helped us understand — things that are typically invisible to families but essential to how field trips work.
Bus contracts and logistics
NYC Public Schools contracts with specific bus companies for school transportation. Schools don't get to choose their bus company or driver—they're assigned based on district routing. These are the same buses that transport students to and from different schools every day, so field trips have strict time windows: buses can't leave before 9:30 AM and must return by 1:30 PM to handle regular school routes. When a bus is late, the school can't just "call a backup bus." They can't switch to a different company for that day or easily reschedule.
Why might buses wait in front of the school before loading?
This is a question that often comes up from chaperones. The school doesn't start loading until enough buses are at the school that the entire trip can be loaded at once. If one out of four buses is late, it's easier to manage kids in a classroom for an extra 20 minutes than have them waiting on a hot or cold bus. The whole field trip goes together—we won't let half the grade leave without the other classes.
Subway vs. bus
You might ask: if buses are unreliable, why not take the subway for a field trip? It's a decision made together by teachers and administration, taking into account a number of factors: the age of students, comfort and experience level of teachers and students on the subway, destination and route, size of the trip, and number of classes involved—all keeping student safety at the forefront. Teachers are ultimately responsible for every student's safety, and in practice buses often feel safer and more manageable even though they come with their own logistics to manage.
Teacher coordination
Each field trip represents weeks of planning and day-of logistics across multiple staff members—from submitting requests weeks in advance to managing permission slips, coordinating with the trip nurse, handling last-minute changes when buses are late, and implementing classroom lessons before and after to maximize learning. This work is largely invisible to families but essential to making the trip happen safely. Sometimes a field trip goes smoothly despite challenges parents don't see. Sometimes the challenges genuinely do impact the experience, and that's disappointing for everyone, including the teachers who worked so hard to plan it.
Field trip schedules
Museums or other field trip destinations that host school groups operate on very tight schedules, booking school groups back-to-back throughout the day. A museum can't just let PS9 stay longer when another class is arriving, because another school group is booked after ours. For most field trip programming, museums give schools 45 minutes to an hour. So even when buses run on time, the actual time at the museum is often shorter than parents might expect.
Beyond Field Trips
The parent in our scenario has every right to be frustrated. Their child was disappointed about the field trip. AND that parent can hold that frustration while also having awareness that the adults involved likely made the best decisions they could, while balancing different stakeholders and constraints.
This iceberg exists for almost every school situation that feels frustrating or disappointing to us as parents. Before we respond—whether it's posting in a chat, sending an email, or talking to another parent—we can pause and ask ourselves: "What might be below the waterline that I'm not seeing?"
That question won't solve every problem. But it helps us communicate in ways that get us better information, direct our energy effectively, and build partnership with the people working hard on behalf of our kids.
Questions or Support?
Our PACE norms and insights are here to support you when you need to navigate conversations with the school. You're always welcome to reach out to the PTO if you'd like support from another parent. The contact information for current board members can be found here.